


Perseverare Diabolicum

by Cinnamaldeide



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Attempted Murder, Canon Compliant, Conversations, Don’t copy to another site, Forgiveness, Guns Lack Intimacy, M/M, POV Hannibal Lecter, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 03, Punishment, Revised Version, Season/Series 02, Season/Series 03, aesthetic included
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 21:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21381172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamaldeide/pseuds/Cinnamaldeide
Summary: The first time Hannibal gutted him. The second time Hannibal went for his brain.The third time Hannibal figured he’d eat his heart.For Lovecrimebooks’ Ravage Anthology
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 51
Collections: RAVAGE - An Infernal Hannibal Anthology





	Perseverare Diabolicum

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [Nalyra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nalyra/pseuds/Nalyra), [Phenobarbital](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phenobarbital/pseuds/Phenobarbital) and [Llewcie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llewcie/pseuds/Llewcie) for having beta read this work, which is part of the Ravage Anthology and will probably be included in a book I’m planning to publish ❀

Sinking his sharp, unforgiving blade into Will’s upper abdomen, holding his flinching figure in an inescapable embrace, Hannibal Lecter trusted that his own ferocious resentment would be subdued to a detached disdain.

He expected Will’s sweetly perfumed blood, which soaked their clothes as his betrayal had permeated Hannibal’s mind, to eventually dissipate all remaining traces of the cold emptiness that had relentlessly descended upon Hannibal.

Caressing Will’s wet nape, supporting his tight jaw with stained hands, Hannibal waited in vain for his frustration to gradually dispel in Will’s beautiful suffering, which had been devised with painstaking dedication, forged in surgical thoroughness. To Hannibal’s utter annoyance, his feelings remained uncomfortably analogous to a disheartening, persistent chill.

Despite his foreknowledge, Will’s disloyalty had cut through Hannibal’s vulnerable flesh, as well as his prideful ego.

Hannibal could comprehend that Will’s moral compass prevented him from reveling in his less socially acceptable inclinations. Hannibal had measured the length to which Will’s resolution would stretch and had gently bent his pliable mind with expert care and devotion, until it became clear that he had been merely deluding himself into celebrating the mighty creature Will wasn’t allowing himself to become.

Hannibal could understand his blind selfishness, could even appreciate his defiance, which unfortunately precluded Will from exploring his own potential. Alas, Hannibal could not condone it with the same generosity.

“Do you believe you could change me the way I’ve changed you?”   
“I already did.”

Behind Hannibal’s shoulders, trembling at the gruesome sight in front of her wide, terrified eyes, helpless in her utter dismay, Abigail proved the undeniable truth in Will’s statement. In an instant, Hannibal’s anger at Will surged from within his chest like dormant flames that never quite extinguished.

Settling for an inexorable undoing, letting his visceral blood slowly drain in a puddle at Hannibal’s feet, suddenly seemed an insufficient punishment for Will’s attitude.

With glacial firmness, Hannibal impulsively extended an inviting hand towards their surrogate daughter, figuring he would repay Will’s hurtful gesture in kind. Hannibal could bestow his pardon, controversial intentions towards poor Abigail aside. He was curious whether Will would ever be capable of equal indulgence. After all, intense emotions, as distressing as they might have been, were meant to be shared between friends.

•

As Bella once confessed to Hannibal, before her regrettable passing, forgiveness could not be demanded, only hoped for.

Admiring Botticelli’s  _ Primavera  _ by Will’s bruised side, confronting his controversial absolution and indecisive moves, sustaining his unconscious body in its sudden fall, tending his superficial wounds, Hannibal deluded himself otherwise. If God could thus readily forgive, so would Hannibal with as much grace.

Preparing the parsley and thyme infusion, securing Will at his table, sedating him properly, holding a circular saw against his skull, incapable of accepting his repeated deceptions and ultimate irresolution, Hannibal annoyingly realized forgiveness didn’t happen on command.

•

To his mild discontent, betrayal paid Hannibal several visits. Repeatedly and often would he linger in languid contemplation of his own intense, mostly satisfying existence, yet mishaps and contretemps would inevitably upset the delicate balance of Hannibal’s fate.

On his return from an expedition to the grocery store, supplies neatly fitted in a paper bag, Hannibal closed the door of their inconspicuous apartment to witness the disheartening sight of Will Graham, healed, steady, controlled, seated on a comfortable chair with a loaded gun in hand. Will’s absorbed look suggested he had been staring at the weapon for a while, before meeting Hannibal’s watchful eyes and pointing it against his own chin.

“Welcome back,” Will greeted cordially.

_ A warm welcome indeed _ , Hannibal bitterly considered, folding his wet coat without averting his curious gaze. His disquieting concern remained well hidden behind an emotionless expression. “I see you waited for my arrival to proceed with your course of action. Was it a deliberate decision?”

“I wouldn’t say so. I decided when I heard your steps in the corridor.”

Briefly assessing the perishables in his grasp, renouncing the optimal conservation of fresh milk and butter, Hannibal studied Will’s strategic position. Their flat was fairly small, rather intimately so for two occupants, but provided with large windows to pleasantly light it. Were the windows at Will’s left to shatter into pieces, shards of glass would scatter at his feet, surrounding Will’s lifeless corpse.

“The lack of finesse probably doesn’t appeal to your taste, but I prefer a practical approach.” His grip was firm, purposeful on the metal handle. “I don’t want to damage my nasal septum or frontal lobe; I know where to aim. It’s not intimate or clean, but it’s certainly going to be  _ definitive _ . You’ll have to repaint the wall, though,” Will conceded. “I thought that marginally less vile than poisoning myself as Bedelia did. You’ll still have the rest of my body to consume, if not my brain.”

“Very kind of you,” Hannibal deadpanned. With stoic indifference, he spared a dispassionate moment to envision the dreadful mess of Will’s gray matter and skull fragments on the ivory linen drapes behind him. A regrettable outcome Hannibal would have liked to prevent.

Exhibiting his own chagrin would have in no measure helped Hannibal’s cause either. “I assume your guilt over my past crimes and our fortuitous survival has reached its maximum duration. I commend your perseverance in enduring a full recovery before threatening to waste every effort within the span of a flight of stairs,” he goaded. Hannibal had been rather prone to sarcasm after their rebirth in blood and seawater.

“In your mind palace, between convenient shadows and deceiving projections of myself, you once wondered for which purpose I’d run after hearing the rabbit scream,” Will recalled. “I waited for you to realize I was never a fox to begin with.”

“Predators often disguise their appearance to avoid their prey’s suspicion,” Hannibal mused, thinking about Will’s surrogate family. A mere charade of pre-packaged self-actualisation. “This doesn’t change their nature.”

“You like to include me within that category,” Will continued, unimpressed, “and you’ve been punishing me whenever I have proved you I’m not. You are aware of my limits, however hard you try to advance them. You had hoped Dolarhyde would draw a new line in the sand, I could sense your anticipation like a weight,” Will reminisced, nostalgic and sympathetic, “so I know how short reality fell of your expectations.”

Flexing his finger on the trigger, Will adjusted his grip. Hannibal was above such display of power. “You’ve been provoking me with sour mocks and petty taunts since I threw the both of us from that cliff,” Will claimed, for which accusation Hannibal didn’t bother to account. “It’s your retribution for my failed suicide. Might as well deserve it.”

“I find it curious that you choose to end your life instead of mine,” Hannibal observed, relocating the burden of his purchases from his stiff arms to the nearby table. Genuine interest aside, prompting Will to state his reasons meant decreasing the odds of having a gun barrel stuck in his mouth.

“Oh, Hannibal,” Will uttered, longing affecting his wistful tone. “I’m afraid you’ll have to deal with your inconvenient compassion for me a bit longer.”

Hannibal thought about their previous months of solitude, engulfed in reciprocal dependence, adapting to their reticent silences, occasionally interrupted by Hannibal’s nasty remarks about Will’s repressed compulsions and Will’s irksome habit of leaving used mugs and empty glasses lying around to tease Hannibal’s ego with teacups and disorder.

Remotely aware of Will’s intention to act upon his threat, not even three steps in front of him, Hannibal glanced at the coffee-stained bottom of one lone cup, decorated with faded floral details.

In a heartbeat, Hannibal grasped it and threw it at him with precise aim.   
Will’s refusal to put dirty crockery in the sink proved fortuitous for a change.

Caught off guard, Will instinctively avoided its course, allowing Hannibal an opportunity to reach for his weapon at full speed and knock Will’s head against the wall with a swift slam. Hannibal considered with grim satisfaction that he just spared himself the trouble of scrubbing evidence from it, as he carried Will’s collapsed weight in his arms without struggle.

Anger could manifest in many ways. A dull revenge could be slow and unrelenting, a sudden outburst impetuous and cathartic, a petty argument liberating and mundanely comforting. In all its forms, anger would still be inevitably unconducive to rational and lucid behaviour.

Hannibal considered himself a patient man, not particularly prone to fits of rage, admittedly mean under unfavourable circumstances, but Will managed to make him  _ furious_.

While discarding the gun with ill-concealed distaste, divesting Will’s upper body, collecting adequate restraints and medical equipment, Hannibal wondered whether his cruel, industrious reactions were in fact an expression of irritation.

His inner turmoil still hadn’t been assuaged by the time Will regained consciousness.

“I’m bound to the kitchen table,” Will noted, frowning at his bare chest and strapped joints, not entirely surprised by his predicament. “For convenience,” he intuited, still drowsy.

“If I am to accept your defeat, then I demand to dictate the terms of your surrender,” Hannibal explained, impassively arranging scalpels and forceps in plain sight. His medical background would always dictate his means of expressing his art, similarly to Benn, to Chekhov, to so many writers and artists before him. His superiority asserted through blood and rigour.

“I’d really rather you not,” Will offered his unsolicited opinion, despite its clear irrelevance. His fidgety spasms conveyed a certain amount of anxiety. Hannibal still hesitated to administer a sedative, preferring him awake and aware, while sterilizing the skin he would cut through. “I know my raw heart on a silver platter would make for a compelling picture, suggestive and poetic as it may be, but your mixed feelings about me won’t wane once you eat it.”

Quite presumptuous of Will to assume Hannibal sought sentimental advice. “You’d rather die than admit your own emotional attachment to me, so strong is your denial, but my preference on the disposition of your remains substantially influences your choice of demise.” Hannibal mulled over Will’s flattering attentiveness, arguably contrite about his refusal to be honest with himself. “You’ll pardon me if your consult on my  _ mixed feelings _ goes unappreciated.”

Droplets of sweat ran down Will’s temples. Hannibal briefly followed their moist traces, nostrils filling with Will’s acrid scent. “You stink of fear much more than when you had a gun to your head,” Hannibal noticed, bemused.

“Can you blame me?” Will retorted, caught in a self-deprecating smile. “I lay on your operating table for some unsolicited surgery, while you complain about my distrust in you.” Will struggled to assume a more comfortable position, sighing tiredly when his neck wouldn’t be provided with any sort of relief. “I cannot afford to rely on someone with whom I share a history of deceptions and ill treatments,” Will stated, emphasising his words with a meaningful glance at his exposed injuries. His abdominal mark, his facial scars.

In retrospect, Hannibal could admit that nipping his singular opportunity at fatherhood in the bud and nurturing his untreated encephalitis, among others of his past choices, didn’t promote mutual confidence. His first instinct often led him to deprive Will of viable options, to present Will with considerable disadvantages, to manipulate Will for his own convenience. To take rather than to offer.

“You might have failed to notice, but you haven’t given me the opportunity to prove myself as your equal since we survived the fall. I burdened myself with my guilty conscience as much as you did with your unfulfilled expectations about me,” Will added with resentment.

It occurred to Hannibal that their conversation was trailing toward familiar waters. For a brief moment, Hannibal smelled their inviting serving of lamb in his Baltimore dining room, Will at his right. Will’s unsure voice on his phone, Jack’s steady steps at his kitchen doorway. “You intended for us to discuss this unfavourable predicament,” Hannibal suddenly realised. “You staged your intentions.”

A telling change in his features betrayed Will’s inappropriate mirth. “It was a manipulation, up to a certain point.” His plan obviously didn’t proceed as expected. “It wasn’t all pretense.”

Hannibal frowned upon his candid admission.

“Anger makes you impulsive, Hannibal. It affects your reasoning and clouds your judgement, I hoped on my behalf for once,” Will admitted, amused, softening his tone to a private confidence. “It devours you from the inside, never sating its hunger nor fed by yours. Cannibalistic or otherwise,” Will specified.

Hannibal felt aching weariness creep up to his nape, scalpel still poised in his hovering hand. “Dante proposed a similar image of the wrathful in his representation of the underworld, intent on reciprocally tearing their flesh apart and consuming shredded remains of their corrupted souls.” It mildly pained Hannibal to compare Will to the supreme poet.

“Virgil met strong resistance from the fallen angels watching over the gates of Dis, before accessing the deepest recesses of Hell with his devout follower by his side,” Hannibal said, before moistening his dry lips. “The devils required the intervention of a celestial messenger to clear the path. What would compel you to tread it?”

“By your side,” Will assumed. Unperturbed, Hannibal countered, “I’ve been waiting for you on the other side all along.”

Will reluctantly committed to offer a comprehensive answer with an impatient, tired sigh. “Compromise, for starters,” he lamented, seeming unsatisfied with the narrow term. “You could stand for some healthy confrontation of ideas. And you could stop forcing my hand, while you’re at it,” Will argued, deliberately twisting his restricted limbs. “You could have asked for my opinion before producing our fake identities, dragging me to a place where no one speaks my language and presuming I’d submit to your decisions without objection.” Hannibal could perceive his rapid heartbeat slowing down to an almost entirely even drum, despite how passionate about their discussion Will was becoming.

“You could have asked me even just about this flat,” Will complained, stirring with his hint of petulance Hannibal’s enduring silence. “I’m suffocating in here,” Will remarked, reminding Hannibal of his weary sighs in front of an open window, uncaring for their well-lit quarters, instead occasionally admiring an alley cat frequenting nearby roofs with meaningful longing. His visible apprehension and loneliness on rainy days, when the stray wouldn’t.

Hannibal briefly pondered about his natural instinct to take rather than to offer. Then about Will’s repressed compulsions and timid, growing cravings.

“I’ll name it,” Hannibal resolved, quite positive he’d live to eventually regret his decision. “I consider it fair for you to choose breed or lack thereof, age and gender, as I do with our victims,” Hannibal heard himself saying, “but rules shall be established, commands shall be taught, trust and respect ought to be methodically built, and I require an adequate incentive to address the creature you’ll deem worth adopting.”

“I planned to point the gun at you,” Will confessed at once, emptying Hannibal’s lungs of air. “You gave me nothing but cuts and bruises inside and out,” Will unnecessarily justified himself. “I decided to threaten my life instead of yours when I realised you didn’t much care about an existence that didn’t include me,” Will said, seemingly likewise out of breath from his own admission. “Lately I came to relate to that,” he added.

In his own mystified bemusement, Hannibal couldn’t quite remember the exact moment his hand choose to abandon the scalpel in favour of tracing Will’s stubbled jaw line, yet Will softened under the tentative caresses of his delicate knuckle. “I still crave your heart on a silver platter,” Hannibal warned, curbing his eagerness to mark Will further with his own touch.

“You and I persist in communicating through metaphors and periphrases, which is not always the clearest way to convey a message,” Will complained. His reluctant reproach lingered in their otherwise silent surroundings, as did their shared long-standing awareness. An existence of disguises and misunderstandings wouldn’t favour naive straightforwardness.

Hannibal could learn to trust his chosen companion though. “Unfortunately for the both of us, I always assume you’ll understand me with crystal clarity.”

•

_ Errare humanum est, _ __   
_ Perdonare divinum, _ _   
_ _ Perseverare autem diabolicum._

•

Comfortably sitting at the table to which Hannibal had tied him less than a month prior, Will observed Hannibal’s grand entrance from their kitchen with mild amusement. “Shashlik with honey, served on a bed of basmati rice,” Hannibal introduced his creation, positioning an inviting plate in front of him with fine elegance. “The meat is marinated overnight in a high-acidity dressing of dry wine, then balanced with a sweeter flavour before.”

Its smell lavished their senses, engulfing them in a mouth-watering aroma. “Drowned in sauce as its source had in muddy waters,” Will observed, privately pleased with Hannibal’s ironic display. “I doubt it struggled to resurface though,” he added, picking up his knife and fork.

“Drowning is a miserable way of dying,” Hannibal commented, taking his own seat. “Filling the lungs requires time, during which a suffocating victim is entirely conscious of their imminent fate.” Studying Will’s soft expression with curious eyes, Hannibal confessed, “I wouldn’t have considered it a wise choice in your case.”

Admiring his smirk, while Will addressed a modest bite of his own serving, Hannibal wondered how Will had felt during his first deliberate kill. Hannibal hadn’t been invited to witness his performance, to his utter disappointment, merely presented with its compromising results.  _ I’m honouring my part of the deal _ , Will claimed on his return, victorious and covered in evidence,  _ You better think of a decent dog name to fulfil your own _ . Hannibal had known such a decision couldn’t be delayed forever.

“You told me about Dante’s design for haughty idiots, tearing each other apart, swimming in mud, eating their own flesh and all that,” Will said with a disregarding gesture. “I adapted it to my own means. It was a handful; I’ll never follow his instructions again,” Will warned, entirely discarding Hannibal’s pleasure in knowing about his inspiration. Eyes averted on his skewers, Will still hadn’t dared to face Hannibal’s devotion. “Delicious,” he praised, eager to change subject. “Much better as food than he has been as a person.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Hannibal said. “I can hardly say I had the pleasure of meeting him under different circumstances,” he teased, gently coaxing information from his reticent companion. Hannibal wasn’t above bribing, if necessary. “Would you offer suggestions for the creature’s name?”

“I was thinking of Chester,” Will answered. “We reached an agreement on allowing pets after you tried to open my  _ chest _ ; you’d appreciate the horrid wordplay,” Will continued, grimacing at his own joke. “It’s also the name of the victim, so might be fitting.”

Hannibal gloated moderately in his seat. “A valid proposal,” Hannibal conceded. “I shall bear in mind your preference for what concerns male exemplar. I was thinking Beatrice would suit a female instead.”

Pouring an appropriate amount of wine in their glasses, Hannibal contemplated the silence his assertion elicited. Raising his look, he noticed Will’s eyebrows frown in musing. Despite his evident puzzlement, his lips merely parted to accommodate his serving of Pinot Noir, obstinately reserving his perplexity for himself.

Hannibal resolved to volunteer the role of Dante’s guide through Heaven, had Will eventually asked nicely.

**Author's Note:**

> Rough translation of the Latin quote:  
Errare humanum est = to err is human  
Perdonare divinum = to forgive is divine  
Perseverare autem diabolicum = but to persevere (in an error) is diabolic  
  
Been a year and a half, but it feels like yesterday. I’m still as grateful as I was back then to have been selected as writer for this amazing project.  
I wasn’t kidding about the book. Let me know if you’re interested, or if you spot errors I should fix.  
[Find me elsewhere](https://cinnamaldeide.carrd.co). [Post on Twitter](https://twitter.com/Cinnamaldeide/status/1193531002762735618?s=20).


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